Hillbarn Theatre

Hillbarn Theatre has been bringing culture and arts to the San Mateo area for over 70 years. Performances have always been sophisticated despite humble and changing surroundings leading up to its current home since 1968 in Foster City. The theater is famous for treating its audiences well; with free coffee at intermission, a necessity in the days when it performed in a cold, converted older chapel. A bell from that church used to bring people to their seats, was stolen but later identified in a San Leandro metal shop and returned. Indeed the theater did perform in a barn near animals in 1941.

Founders Robert Brauns and Sam Rolph aspired to emulate 1940’s New England theaters diverging from the community theater of College of San Mateo known as the Peninsula Little Theatre.

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